


Inner Steel

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Brick (2005), Trainspotting (1996)
Genre: Anyem, Canonical Character Death, Crossover, F/M, Trainspotting/T2, warning - drug abuse, warning - sex work, warning - violence against sex workers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 00:57:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9574838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: After getting out of jail, Begbie wonders what happened to a girl he used to know, a girl who looked as if she would blow away any moment, and yet never did.Anyem: Franco Begbie (Trainspotting/T2) x Emily Kostich (Brick)





	

_Don’t ask me where this came from, it’s been percolating for a couple of weeks and now I’ve decided ‘screw it, I’m sharing this strange little thing with the world’._

**Pairing:** Anyem – Francis Begbie (Trainspotting/T2) x Emily Kostich (Brick).

**Rated:** M

**Warning:** Canonical character death. Mentions: Drug abuse, prostitution, violence against sex workers.

**Summary:** After getting out of jail, Begbie wonders what happened to a girl he used to know, a girl who looked as if she would blow away any moment, and yet never did.

=====

**Inner Steel**

2017

Simon knows for a fact that if Mark and Begbie are in the same room then someone’s probably going to end up dead and for all that Begbie’s been languishing at Her Majesty’s pleasure for the last two decades, the someone’s probably going to be Mark. So he knows for a fact that he’s going to have to get Begbie out of the pub, and more importantly stop him coming back to the pub, as quickly as possible. Or at least before Mark has the chance to arrive. He’s just about thought up a plan and is about to enact it when Begbie asks a question completely out of the left field that derails him completely.

“What happened to Emily?”

Simon blinks, racks his brains, and within a split second, remembers Emily, and within that same split second feels an icy trickle run down his spine completely unrelated to the fact Mark’s life is probably in imminent danger. Emily. Oh fuck, Emily. Of all the women in the world to ask after, why the fuck did it have to be Emily?

He would dearly love to tell Begbie that Emily is absolutely fine, that she got clean and moved to… some quaint little town in New England and married an older guy who treats her like royalty, or she went backpacking in Australia and liked it so much she never came back, or she won the lottery and is living on her own private tropical island. Unfortunately none of those things would be true. So, he does the next best thing, and stalls for time.

“Who?” he asks.

====

1997

She’s one of Sick Boy’s ‘special’ girls, so she’s already off the cards, and on top of that she’s a smackie, which Begbie swore he’d never get involved with, but at the same time, there’s something about her that he just can’t shake. Maybe it’s her air of world-weary helplessness, the quiet way she just looks at you with those big blue eyes like saucers, expecting the worst and hoping for the best at the same time. Whenever their paths cross, she always gives him that slow, weak smile, the one that’s soliciting for business but at the same time hoping that no-one’s going to take her up on the offer because although she can’t be more than eighteen, she’s already so damn tired of life. She looks pathetically in need of protection and yet with some kind of inner steel at the same time. She doesn’t hide the needle marks in her elbows and she wears them almost like a challenge at times. Begbie remembers the first time he saw her, standing under the street lamp a few doors down from the pub, looking like she could faint any second, her face bloody and bruised but still with that inner strength, keeping her rooted against all the odds. The sight of her made something boil in his veins.

“Who did that?” he asked, indicating her face. She shrugged.

“Just some John. Liked it rough.”

“I’ll fucking kill him.”

She laughed and he could tell that she was in pain, broken ribs probably from the way her arm was curled around her middle.

“Good luck with that,” she called over to him. After a moment she beckoned him over to her with a flick of her head. “Tenner a time, take as long as you want.”

“Nah. I don’t pay for anything I can get for free.”

She laughed then, in spite of the split lip.

“Yeah, I’m not exactly pulling in much custom at the moment.”

That was it, really, the extent of their interaction, but as he turned to go into the pub, she spoke again.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

“Begbie.” After a moment, he added: “Franco Begbie.” And after another moment. “You?”

“Emily. Emily Kostich.”

And that was that. She always says hi to him whenever they meet, always in that same soft, weary voice. He never has found out who’d hit her, and not for want of trying. He’d nearly glassed Sick Boy in an effort to find out but Emily had come in for a slash and a double whisky to warm her up at that point and told him to knock it off, in that quiet, tired voice of hers, and something inside him had indeed knocked it off.

In a weird kind of way he’s going to miss her when he takes off, and despite everything, he finds himself slipping out under cover of darkness to find her again. It doesn’t exactly take long, she never moves from under her streetlight unless she’s picked up a John. She’s leaning against it tonight, hands in her coat pockets and too-skinny legs crossed, her long, straggle-ended hair blowing about in the breeze like a halo around her head. A fallen angel indeed; she’s lost her wings and come down to earth with a bump.

She smiles when she sees him and beckons him over with a flip of her hair, unwilling to take undoubtedly freezing hands out of her pockets.

“You’re a wanted man, Franco Begbie,” she says.

“Aye. I’m taking off soon. Lie low for a bit. I’ve got a mate in London, I should be safe there.”

“Nice. Well, I’ll probably still be here when you get back.”

She sounds so resigned to it, that’s the problem, but at the same time, there’s a morbid cheerfulness in her voice. Yes, he’s going to miss her. And some part of him wants to make sure, just in case he never does see her again, because if he gets caught he’s already looking at fifteen to twenty and girls like Emily, well, they really don’t last that long.

“You cold?” he asks.

Emily scoffs. “I’d be freezing my fucking knickers off if I was wearing any.”

“Want to warm up?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “I thought you didn’t pay for anything you could get for free.”

“I don’t.”

She shakes her head and stares into the gutter for a long while as the rain begins to come down. She looks at him then, running make-up making the dark shadows under her eyes even worse.

“All right then, Franco Begbie. Show a girl a good time for once.”

She’s got this weird innocence, Begbie thinks as they get back to his flat and she takes off her coat and shoes and dress with the ease and unselfconsciousness of someone who’s done this a hundred times with a hundred different men, and just a touch of shyness in her eyes as she turns around and lets him see her naked. Like something precious that’s been broken and put back together but still looks as fragile and delicate as it always did despite the cracks. And the needle tracks.

It’s not exactly earth-moving, just going through the motions, but he does kiss her, and he read somewhere that you never kiss a hooker because it’s too intimate, or some crap like that. In the cooling afterwards he lights two cigarettes and passes her one, and she stares up at the ceiling for a long time, blowing smoke up towards the tobacco stained plaster. Her hands are shaking a little.

Finally she turns over to face him, and presses in a little closer against his side, as if she’s just realised that she’s not on the clock and she can actually take the time to enjoy this one.

“Thanks,” she says.

“I’ll probably have gone by the time you wake up,” he replies.

“I guessed.”

They don’t say anything more, and Emily falls asleep in his arms, her hair in rats’ tails over his chest. For a moment he wants to take her with him, but he knows that’s a fucking terrible idea. How he ended up feeling this way about a hooker with a skag habit is beyond him, but that’s the way the world turns, he supposes. Things never go the way you plan them.

He doesn’t leave her any money; it’d only end up in Sick Boy’s pockets anyway. But he does kiss her, and she smacks him in her half-asleep state and tells him to fuck off to London, and he realises in that moment why he likes her so much. Weirdly innocent and completely out of her depth, desperate for protection, but still, in her own way, able to fend for herself. Inner steel.

He sees her again when he comes back for Tommy’s funeral, just a glimpse of her face through the pub window. She’s thinner than she was, gaunter, the shadows around her eyes darker, her hair still blowing like a fallen angel’s halo around her head. She meets his eyes, and for the briefest of moments she smiles, but then she’s gone, and by the time he can get out of the pub and slip outside to look for her, she’s nowhere to be seen.

It’s daylight outside, and Emily is a creature of the night.

=====

2017

“Who?” Simon asks, stalling for time.

“Emily. Emily Kostich. She was one of your girls, back in the day.”

Simon shrugs. “There were a few.”

“Tiny, skinny thing. Addicted to smack, which was probably your fault. Long blonde hair and big blue eyes. Waif-like. Like a fucking fairy, she was, looked like she’d blow away in a light breeze, only she never did.”

Simon can’t help but give a snort of laughter, which he knows is probably not going to help in the circumstances. “You in love, Franco?”

“Just answer the fucking question.” Begbie’s voice is barely more than a growl and Simon sighs, wondering whether the truth or a lie is more dangerous right now. She joined the circus. She went to Hollywood. She was abducted by fucking aliens. _I don’t know_. By the time he’s worked out what he’s going to say, enough time has passed that if whatever he says isn’t the truth, then it’s a really obvious lie. Still, he’s got to try it.

“I don’t know. It’s been twenty years, Franco. I didn’t keep tracking devices on them.”

Begbie takes off his sunglasses and just glares at Simon.

“You’re fucking lying.”

Well, it was a long shot and he’d almost got away with it. Simon sighs and moves a tiny bit further away from Begbie as he tells the truth.

“She’s dead.”

There’s silence for an uncomfortably long time and Simon’s about to enact his plan to get Begbie out of the pub and keep him out of the pub until he can do something to make sure he and Mark never meet again, when Begbie speaks again.

“What happened?”

“She’s _dead_ , Franco.”

“Yeah, I fucking heard you the first time. _What happened?_ ”

Simon really doesn’t want to tell him.

“Was it the smack?”

Well, in a way it was.

“Yeah.” Begbie glares at him again. “Sort of,” Simon adds hastily.

“ _What happened?_ ”

The voice is barely more than a hiss and Simon’s already had his life flash before his eyes twice in the last ten minutes so one more time isn’t going to make much of a difference. It’s not as if it’s going to be any different to the last two occasions.

“There was a deal. It went wrong. Some of the goods got stolen and Emily got the blame. Dealer killed her.”

Begbie’s silent for another long moment.

“Where is he?”

“Inside.” _You’ve probably met him_ , Simon adds mentally, but likes being alive enough not to say.

“I told her it would kill her,” Begbie mutters. “Where is she?”

“Franco, she’s fucking _dead_!”

“I fucking heard! Where is she?”

Simon sighs, but at least this might be a way to get him out of the pub.

“Same place as Tommy.” They couldn’t really afford a burial and fancy headstone, after all. No funeral, no flowers, shove her in a crematorium oven and job done.

A plastic bag of human ashes is surprisingly heavy.

After ten minutes of tense, screaming silence, Begbie leaves the pub and Simon breathes a sigh of temporary relief.

X

Emily. Emily Kostich. Begbie allows himself a moment to imagine a better life for her. Well, at least, a life in which she’s actually _alive_.

But then the moment is over and he pushes the thought away. She’s fucking dead. She’s not coming back.

He moves off down the street. He doesn’t know why he asked Simon where her remains ended up, he’s not a sentimental man and he’s got no intention of going to pay his respects to a hooker he slept with once and didn’t pay for, however much she might have got under his skin.

He looks back down towards the flickering streetlamp and for a moment he can see her skinny shadow leaning against it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind it suddenly registers just how much he’s going to keep missing her.

 


End file.
